Members from selectboards across valley towns including Waitsfield, Warren and Moretown say they aren’t considering the idea right now.
In 1971 legislators across the country agreed to standardize a lower voting age of 18. More recently, officials in some towns have started suggesting even younger voters deserve more of a say — including in Brattleboro, which lowered its local voting age to 16 last June following a decade of resistance and two gubernatorial vetoes.
“I think young people are smarter than I was at their age … a different world requires and imposes a different mindset on young people,” said Kurt Daims, executive director at Brattleboro Common Sense, an activist organization that began advocating for the youth vote amendment in 2013. “We’ve just got to get new blood in this system.”
But towns in the Mad River Valley area don’t seem likely to join the movement.
“This change opens a Pandora’s box,” said Mike Bard, a selectboard member from Waterbury. “There are some people who are very responsible at the age of 16, but there are plenty who are just not.”
Members from selectboards across valley towns including Waitsfield, Warren and Moretown say they aren’t considering the idea right now.
“I applaud 16-year-olds who want to become active and participate, but I’d have to give it some long thought before I think I’d open the vote to them,” said Fred Messer, member of the Waitsfield selectboard. “They can do a lot of things that would be just as meaningful and beneficial than simply casting a vote.”
Said Bard, “There is nothing that prevents young people from showing up at a selectboard meeting or writing into legislatures to make their points. I encourage them to be a part of the process, but I’m not sure voting is the place to start.”
Others in the Mad River Valley community believe following Brattelboro’s lead would result in positive change.
Matt Henchen, civics teacher and head of the history department at Harwood Union High School, said there’s value in youth voting.
“The belief that young people are not educated or informed enough and that they would make a bad decision is a dominant belief in our society that needs to be challenged,” said Henchen. “What I would argue is that I know plenty of 16- and 17-year-olds who are more informed on political and policy-related issues than adults.”
Henchen works closely with his school’s chapter of Youth Lobby, a statewide activist group focused on young people, and supports the notion that young voters have a place in politics. “They’re being taxed, their money is being spent, and yet they have no say over where it goes,” he said.
Harwood Union’s Youth Lobby Club has not yet begun a strong push for lowering the local voting age, he said, but the topic has come up in group discussions since the change in Brattleboro.
The change gave 16- and 17-year-old Brattleboro residents the ability to vote in municipal elections, serve on the town’s selectboard and participate in town meetings. Residents have argued that since 16-year-olds can drive, work and pay taxes, they might as well be able to vote.
According to the National Youth Rights Voting Association, six other towns across the country have made similar amendments, including two in California and four in Maryland. The topic has even been broached on a congressional level; in 2018 U.S. Rep. Grace Meng, D-NY, proposed altering the 26th Amendment.
Still, uncertainty about joining in persists, as do questions about younger voters’ ability to make informed decisions.
“When people pose this idea that they don’t know enough or are not informed enough, I would push back against that and say, ‘Well, isn’t that a problem?’” said Henchen. “Shouldn’t they be? Shouldn’t they have some level of political literacy to form a political position? This is a problem we can address.”
Rebecca Olshan reported this story on assignment from The Valley Reporter. The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
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Categories: Elections
do any of these 16 or17 year old voters pay property taxes/// still living with mommy or daddy/// no skin in the game///
So you think only property owners should vote///are you a colonist or just dont know how taxes work//my 17 year old has a W2 and pays income taxes///not to mention sales tax///license and registration fees//i could go on///ill put his contribution to the economy up against yours///he has to work after school today///someone has to pay for you to thump the keyboard all day
Your 17-year-old is not of legal age to enter contracts, so there is that. Your 17-year-old can’t drive a car for hire, enter the military, drain a fry vat at McDonalds, and the list goes on.
There should be one age of majority for everything…..20 would be a historically accurate age.
Neil, number one, a 17 year old can do all of those things you listed. They can Door Dash, join the military with parents permission and change the fryer vat at 16, so thanks for inadvertently making my point.
My real point though is that if you pay taxes and have a W2, you should have the right to vote. No taxation without representation. You’re on the dole or not contributing to society, like mday, oh well, get a job.
Since when do students pay income tax? When I was in high school, it was deducted from my check, but I got it all back in a refund.
Well you argue for your point well, but are we discerning what is best, true for our children and country?
Money was used to keep slaves from being able to vote.
You can work at 10 years old in some states, 12 in many, should they be able to vote?
If you are homeless, you’re not allowed to vote?
If your company loses money, do you lose the right to vote?
If you are a citizen of another country, but you earn money can you vote in that country?
If you pay massive taxes on a second home that exceed the earning power of your son, should you have the right to vote in that state?
You have to be 21 to earn money driving outside your state, see CDL requirements, you have to be 18 in order to drive in state.
https://www.smart-trucking.com/cdl-age-requirements/
Needing parents’ permission to join military, means you’re not old enough to do it on your own.
Things may have changed since I was a manager at McD’s, but you had to be 16 to operate the grill and fryolator, 18 to filter the grease (it’s rather dangerous).
Our age of majority was forever 21, but they needed more people to fight in wars so they lowered the age to 18. Your son is not considered responsible enough to drink alcohol or smoke pot….but he can vote, though I would recommend voting over taking drugs any day, regardless of age.
To argue paying taxes in Vermont gives you the right to vote allows anyone to vote, non-citizens, which is just not right.
Being 18 years old and a citizen are pretty open and accommodating voting privileges, also very reasonable.
If you can’t have a beer because “your brain is still developing,” then you shouldn’t be voting, for the same reason. And while I’m at it, same goes for registering for the draft. Pick ONE age and hold everyone, including women, fully and equally accountable. Just guessing there’d be less support for all these wars.
Oh to be sixteen again, and know it all. Let me see, average may vote, may not. Vote with their parents, or vote against their parents. Vote with their favorite teacher, coach or priest. Don’t know they don’t know everything. No skin in the game.
Maybe the Romans had it right. Age 35 and property.
Question, if a kid shouldn’t vote because their brain is still developing, should a boomer not be able to vote because their brain is deteriorating?
Btw, if we went to 35 and property owner, the liberal supermajority would get even bigger, cuz guess who’s got the money??? Some big brain strategy there.
But you can’t work at McDonald’s straining the fry vat until you are 18?
So this was all done in the cultural revolution in China. It is all part of an active subversion which is a military action. This makes no sense what so ever, unless you look through the lens of a cultural, marxist revolution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g
Then, huh, everything fits perfectly, because above all else they are organized, surely.
https://www.infowars.com/posts/communist-cultural-revolution-happening-now-in-america-warns-chinese-immigrant/
A ray of light (sanity) being shined on the misconception that the adolescents of today are somehow more intelligent, responsible, and/or mature than generations preceding them. Oscar Mayer has a theory about that position. It’s called, Bologna !
Yes, this makes sense, let all 15-16 make all the financial decisions for the state, it probably won’t be any worse than the gaggle of fools making these decisions today.
Oh wait, most don’t drive, those that can, can’t drive at night or have other minors in the car, they’re not old enough to join the military or buy alcohol or cigarettes, but if you buy them a video game they’ll vote for your pet projects………………….
What a pathetic scam for a vote, wake up, people next they’ll want Illegals to vote, Oh I think they already do !!
To put it colloquially, “you got it”.
My peer group and I may not have thought so at age 16, but we were ideological, naive dumbasses. I would venture that, given years of perspective, the same was true for many of you when you were 16.
And it’s just as true of 16 year-olds today and it will be just as true tomorrow. Despite what may be their best intentions given their limited experience of the world, I do not now and will not ever support 16 year-olds having a say in anything that affects me or this country. Sorry. Call me an ornery old goat. I’ll wear that title with honor.
Let’s speak the truth here. Having 16 year-olds vote is just another liberal-prog scheme to push for even more demonrats to be elected and for more autocratic laws to be enacted. It’s absolutely no different that letting illegal aliens (yeah, I said it, and it’s true) vote.
I’ll say one thing in defense of most of us here. We say what we mean and we mean what we say. We have no need to cloak our goals behind a pile of mis-direction, gobbledygook, and virtue signaling.
Have I made my point?
The 16 year old vote is an absurdity.
reactionary disturber/// did it again/// message to chris/// i was working when i was sixteen years old and paid income tax/// did not own land then/// now i own land and i intend to keep it// it will not be taken by taxes/// i grew up poor and i am not going to die poor/// my thumping got your attention///
Likely, he/she is a Left fascist troll. I recognize the characteristics.
Sixteen and 17 year olds are eager to vote Democrat due to their indoctrination during their “education”. I work with this population and to say the VAST majority are not studied enough to make decisions that impact taxpayers.
Socilailsts (communitsts) are despearte for votes. Trump is winning so all you commies and maxists (radical socilaist progressives) get your tissues ready! WAA WAH!
Socialists (communists) are desperate for votes. Trump is winning so all you commies and Marxists (radical socialist progressives) get your tissues ready!!
I’m pretty sure if you asked 100 16 year olds their opinions on the latest national or local issues 95 would be shockingly ignorant of what’s going on. It’s not their fault.. I mean what did you care about at that age? Come on! Common sense is gone in this state.. Our schools are grooming the next bunch of progressives so we all know why there is a push for this now.
So these same people who believe a 20 year old is not mature enough to buy a pack of smokes think 16 year olds should vote? Got it…..